Love As A Construct
by Quietly Making Noise
Summary: Now Aperture is out of the red, Caroline has a genuinely philanthropic idea to pitch: the Aperture Science Self-Esteem Fund For Girls. Can she bare to slide the sheet into Mr Johnson's paperwork without telling him..?


_"You look great, by the way. Very healthy."_

Portal = Valve. You don't see me anywhere in this equation.

* * *

><p>The pile of papers to be signed felt heavier than usual, even though she had only added a single sheet.<p>

She had spent quite a long time the previous evening locked up on her office, studying a random sample of typical performance reports and request slips so that her addition wouldn't stand out. She didn't blame him for blindly signing the papers - the daily tally worked out on average as ninety-seven point three recurring. Caroline would know: she was the one who counted and filed them. She was hoping, despite being somewhat in two minds about her deceit, that the sheet with its dense, tiny print, would go unnoticed. She let the door to her office close by itself behind her, and headed for the CEO's domain.

Her heels echoed in the corridor, punctuating the continuous humming of the generators and daylight-grade halogen lights. She was glad she had thought to put on her little red scarf; she was going to need all the confidence she could fool herself into possessing. Given the content of the paper she was hoping to trick Mr Johnson into signing (she really was feeling rather bad about that, but it did not lessen her determination), she was uncomfortably reminded of the first time she had worn heels for an entire day. Or more accurately, of the morning after the first time she had worn heels for an entire day, of the cramping, shooting pains which had lanced up from the soles of her rather large feet when she crouched down. The extra inch of height had boosted her self-esteem, but it had hurt. A memory of a phys-ed instructor arose unbidden in her mind: "Pain is weakness leaving the body!"

_Pain reduces weakness in the ratio of tears (T) to laughter ( (-y)L ), where the negative coefficient -y is number of smiles plus ability to lie expressed as a percentage. Tears have no coefficient._

Caroline knocked twice, and opened the door without waiting. She was the only one allowed to do that.

'Here are today's forms, sir.'

'Good morning Caroline. How's the Excursion Funnel?'

'Progressing smoothly sir.'

'Hold up, they got it working and no one told me?'

'No sir, the _development_ is progressing smoothly.'

'Dammit Caroline don't scare me like that. Pass me those pain pills.'

'... The bottle is empty sir. I'll replace it and put in an order.'

'Can you make them any stronger?'

'You're already at fifteen miligrams sir.'

'Make it fifty.'

Throwing science at the wall to see what sticks, even with his own body. It was a statistical fact that if she hadn't been around to temper his ideas, he would have accidentally killed himself twenty-seven times over. Caroline made herself a note to increase the pain pills to twenty miligrams. 'I'll be back for the forms in an hour sir.'

He was flipping through the sheets now, the paper crackling in time with the trembling of his hand. Despite announcing her intention to leave, Caroline caught herself staring at the scarred fingers.

_Weakness equals bone structure plus muscle strength, over mental capacity, not forgetting to factor in external variables._

It was no good. She couldn't do it.

'Sir...'

'Caroline?'

'There's something...' She stepped closer to the desk and bent over the in-tray where she had placed the pile of papers. Her hair fell down in front of her face as she licked the tip of her finger and began to flick through the corners, scanning the sheets for her deceitful addition.

Presently, Mr Johnson reached up his hand and tucked her hair back behind her ear, flicking her earring with the smooth skin of his fingertips where years ago the fingerprints had been burned off in a human-disassembly incident in sphere Archimedes Bravo. The little tremble of his hand sent a punch of warmth into her heart and her torso. Caroline closed her teeth on her lower lip and bit down. Every now and again, his spontaneous displays of affection still shocked her into saying to herself, _It's true. You are loved._

She had come a very, _very_ long way since she had joined Aperture. Mostly thanks to Mr Johnson. His help had been unconscious and blunt and often downright rude, but it was help.

His hand lingered by her ear. She reached up her own hand and tucked a non-existent strand of forgotten hair away, brushing her fingers against his, before she straightened up.

'Sir, I... I wasn't going to mention this. But here I go. I dr-'

He coughed thickly before she could continue. 'Any more thoughts on the DOS yet?'

'Wh- Sir, please.'

'I'm serious, Caroline. Think about it.'

'Mr Johnson, this is important. I drew up this proposal.'

'A proposal? I knew you could surprise me, but to propose..!'

'A scientific proposal, sir.'

'Oh...' He always became more serious when she used the full depth of her voice on him. It was nice to know that still worked, despite it all. 'Well, let me see it.'

She handed him the sheet. He laid it flat on the desk and squinted at it. 'Wait a second, you wrote this? Slipped it into the pile of things me to sign? Hoping I wouldn't notice it?'

'Then I got cold feet and I pulled it out again. What do you think sir?'

'I think I've fired folks for less than that.'

'You remember what happened the last time you tried to fire me, sir. It wasn't pleasant. For either of us.'

'Dammit Caroline, let's not go over that train wreck.' He coughed again. 'Alright what is this. A fund?'

'Yes sir Mr Johnson.'

'A- what now? Self-esteem fund? What the hell is that?'

'Yes sir. For girls. I thought a clause could be inserted in the test subject contract-stroke-waiver, where in the event of demise, they can choose to donate one or more vital organs to be auctioned off. The proceeds go into a _separate_ account, Mr Johnson. We will then accept proposals from charities, fundraisers, mental health centres and the like, for use of the funds for work to improve the self-esteem of girls. In the name of Aperture.'

He looked hard at her. 'Why?'

_Pain is the synaptic interpretation of electrical signals generated by nerve endings. Social pain is synapses firing in the cingulate cortex. In layman's terms, what you are feeling now does not exist._

She tried to hold his eyes, telling herself that his question did not reflect badly on her. It was on the contrary proof of her worth; of the project's worth. 'Science is not about "why", sir. It's about "Why not".'

'Couldn't have put it better myself.'

Not having the force for one each, they shared a smile between them.

Mr Johnson drew a sharp breath through his nose, and reached for the penpot on the right hand side of the desk. He initialled the two pages of her proposition and signed the bottom of the final sheet. 'A present to you, Caroline; if anyone else tried a stunt like that they'd be out of the facility before you could say "Vitrified". Now you set this up quietly and run it by yourself, you hear?'

'Yes sir Mr Johnson!'

'Atta girl. You can explain why some other time. Right now I've got paperwork.'

Caroline left the office door ajar, and returned to her own room with the signed proposal in her hands. The first thing she did after placing the papers on her desk was to open the locked cupboard with the little key in her desk drawer, take a new bottle of pills, and slip back into the CEO's office. Returning to her own office, she sent an email to the pharmacology department about a new prescription. Only then did she allow herself to pick up the proposal again and breathe a sigh of relief.

There would be forms to fill in, things to declare, and a lot of letters to send to the various charities she had mentioned in her abstract. But it would be worth it. Perhaps she could even request the Aperture Science Experimental Applied Psychology lab to leave the test subjects alone for long enough to develop an Aperture Science Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance for Young Children... There would be plagerism issues using that title though - Caroline had learned a long time ago to sniff out legal issues long before most other employees.

She was glad she had backed out of her plan to deceive him. She just had to hope he would forget to press her about the reason. The truth would be messy to articulate, and she wasn't sure she could do it without sounding like an unscientific moron. That didn't stop her from testing it out in her head as she settled down to draft a letter.

_Because repairing unstable self-esteem is tricky, but it can be done. All it requires is development of related variables, such as a tone of voice, a way of holding one's head, certain items of clothing which the subject associates with status and confidence. _

_It is useful to think of love as a construct which can be created and repaired by human intervention. And it can be done. I am the proof of that, sir._


End file.
